Excuse Me, This New Whole Foods Potato Tastes Like What?

They say everything tastes like chicken. But a potato? I don’t know about that.

Videos by Sporked

And I’ve eaten a lot of potatoes in my life. Boiled, mashed, stuck in a stew. You name it, I’ve probably eaten it, preferably with an unreasonable amount of butter. But I can’t say I’ve ever bitten into one and thought, “You know what this reminds me of? Chicken.”

Well, that’s about to become a possibility.

A new potato variety called Poulette has arrived at select Whole Foods stores and its claim to fame is that it supposedly tastes like roast chicken. No chicken stock, no poultry seasoning, and no actual chicken involved. It’s just a potato. A potato that has somehow developed a reputation for tasting like Sunday dinner.

Naturally, I have a few questions.

How Does a Potato End Up Tasting Like Roast Chicken?

Poulette comes from Row 7, a seed company that works with chefs and plant breeders to develop vegetables with flavor in mind. The potato was created through more than a decade of work, starting with a cross in 2014 between a rare French heirloom and a Cornell University breeding line.

Rather than adding chicken flavoring to an ordinary potato, the team developed Poulette through traditional plant breeding. So the savory flavor is supposed to come from the potato itself. It’s described as rich, nutty, and savory, with roasted notes reminiscent of chicken―which is an interesting thing to say about a vegetable that has spent its entire existence underground.

Here’s my favorite part, though: even the people who made it aren’t totally sure why it works.

“I wish we knew,” chef and Row 7 co-founder Dan Barber told Food & Wine. “The first time we tasted it, everyone at the table said the same thing. The name more or less picked itself.”

Poulette is French for young hen, in case the theme wasn’t clear.

Barber, the chef behind the Michelin-starred Blue Hill at Stone Barns, worked with Cornell University researchers to develop the potato. Over the years, breeders evaluated everything from texture and disease resistance to yield and flavor, gradually narrowing down which plants were worth keeping.

It’s a lot of science for a potato. But Row 7 puts flavor at the center of its breeding process, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

I’m intrigued, but also slightly skeptical. Potatoes are already pretty good at tasting like potatoes, and I’ve never felt they needed to branch out into other food groups. Then again, if someone handed me a roast potato that tasted like it had spent an afternoon sitting underneath a chicken in the oven, I wouldn’t complain.

Where Can You Buy Poulette Potatoes?

For now, Poulette is available at approximately 60 Whole Foods Market locations across New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, with bags priced at $6 each. The potatoes are expected to be available through March 2027, so there’s a decent window to try them if you’re in the area.

That’s not exactly bargain-bin potato territory, although I suppose you’re paying for more than a decade of work and the novelty of a spud with an unusually specific flavor profile.

If you manage to get your hands on a bag, Barber recommends keeping things simple the first time. Baking or roasting the potatoes without too many extras should give their natural flavor a chance to come through.

I’d do exactly that, because the whole appeal here is finding out whether the chicken comparison actually holds up. Does it taste like chicken straight out of the oven? Would it work mashed? And what happens if you turn it into fries? Are we about to get chicken-flavored fries without anyone having to invent a new seasoning?

I’m not sure whether Poulette will become the next big thing in potatoes, but I’d certainly give it a try. If nothing else, I want to find out whether it really tastes like chicken, or whether a table full of chefs just got a little carried away describing a particularly delicious spud.